Week 2 to 4 . . Settled much

It was our 1st weekend in the US, we visited a club called Al-Amir with our friends :).
Al-Amir plays Bollywood songs to dance on, it has perfect ambiance and a very talented belly dancers.

Between 1st to 4th week I met many more people who are our friends now :)

We owe our comfort, settlement, non home sickness and every other positive to our friend circle here. We never enjoyed so much in India, but here it didn't feel difficult.

People who stayed in our community are our family, and yes trust me, just a weeks time was enough.
This is the phase when we get to know the importance of having people around us. People with similar wavelength and frequency are very important.


I will list few experiences in this time frame which can help the readers:

Laundry: Our community has a common laundry system. In the US there are separate washer and dryer units. One round of laundry takes about 11 coins  - 25 cents. You will get these coins in the bank. Be aware of the money eating laundry machines :(

Grocery: We were dependent on our friends for grocery and other shopping as we did not own a car yet. I loved this dependency as they never made us feel different, rather we started getting to know people more with this.
I understood the importance of organized shopping and stocking up. I started maintaining a list of things I have in stock and the ones I need to buy.
This made my life easy and also help me avoid excess shopping.

Walmart - We mostly purchased our bedding, certain dairy products, sauces and electric appliances  till date from here

Costco & Sams - These are amazing for bulk purchase. We majorly purchased toiletries, vegetables, fruits, ghee, onion and potatoes from here.

Dollar tree: Apart from all the grocery and household needs I have this crazy love for storage cans/boxes. I wanted to store everything in apt sized boxes as I did in India but its not a best practice here :)
When you know you have a temporary visa, the thing you should avoid is stocking up and shopping w/o looking at the marketplace for second hand goods.
My husband got lucky as my temptation to buy storage cans was fulfilled in dollar tree. It is a boon for people who move in. Most of the things there just cost $1. Yes, just $1.
So when you come down to states, do not forget to visit dollar tree.

Fireworks on 4th July: Owing to USA independence day there is an amazing fireworks in all the cities of the US. We were fortunate to witness one. Words will fall short if I try to describe it :). We had delicious tacos on the very night

Austin: We went to Austin with our friends during the 4th July, USA Independence day long weekend. It was an amazing experience. We visited Barton Springs Municipal Pool,
Texas Capitol, 6 street and McKinney Falls State Park.  We had amazing Thai food at Mai Thai.

Since we carried snacks and sandwich with us we had only 2 meals in Austin in a 2 day tour. 

The most important thing which I would like to mention is the way we got the stuff for our house. Me and my husband were laundering one fine weekday and the bulletin broad said a family wanted to resale stuff. We called them and found out that we can take a well maintained bed, mattress, beautiful wooden recliner + ottoman, 2 small tables, racks, kitchen and cookware. When we saw it we knew we are now SETTLED MUCH :). 

Normally we would had spent not less than $500 for the stuff we got but here we got it for $170. Attention to people moving in and out within the community helped us save time, efforts as well as money.

In additional to all this, here is the reason we settled much :

                     

{Appendix :p
I - Me/Rujuta
We/our - Me and my husband}